"Tessie, why are you angry with me?"

"Angry?"

His question answered by another, answered to the accompaniment of elevated eyebrows and a pretty little expression of surprise—after the manner of her sex.

"Well—yes. You are—aren't you?"

"Was never better tempered in my life."

"I rather wish that you would get ill tempered."

"Why?"

"Because—because then you are nicer. Nicer to me.

"Nicer, Mr. Danvers?"

"Mr. Danvers!"

"Well, that is your name, is it not?"

"Oh, certainly, Miss Depew."

The girl laughed nervously.

They were walking across the fields from the milking shed, the girl carrying the cream for supper.

"You are laughing now," he said.

"You said once you liked to hear me laugh."

"Oh, I mean you are laughing at me. Don't feel sufficient interest in me, I suppose? Please don't say it; I will take it you mean that."

"I think you are very horrid this afternoon."

"I feel so. My feelings are oozing up to the surface, I suppose. And I meant to——"

"To what?"

"Oh, it—it does not matter."

"You talk in—well, I can't understand you."

"Like a man awakening from a sleep. Wits have been wool gathering. I have been dreaming. Accept my apologies, Miss Depew."

"Miss Depew! How dreadfully formal you have grown."

"Blizzard came along, and froze me all up."

"Poor fellow!"

"I am glad you have some sort of feeling for me—if it is only pity."

"Oh, I always sympathize with—with people who are all frozen up."

"I suppose it is no use asking you for a plain answer to a plain question?"

"Why not?"

"Well—you are a woman."

"Is that a compliment for my sex, or is it marked 'personal'?"

"Tessie——"

"That's better; you are thawing."

"Tessie!"

"You have called me twice, and I am listening all the time."

"I don't know how to say what I want to say."

"How curious! You are usually so—well, never at a loss for words."

"You chill me."

"Poor fellow! Going into the Arctic regions again?"

"I am going away from the farm—to the Arctic regions, or to the devil, I don't much care where."

She started when he said he was going away, and caught her underlip between her teeth, and held it there.

It prevented its trembling. Presently she said:

"I thought you were going to stay—quite a while."

"So did I."

"Why are you going, then?"

"Driven away."

"Really."

She was herself again by now. A conscious smile played round her lips as she inquired:

"Who's the driver?"

"Tessie Depew."

It did not surprise her a bit; she had guessed what was coming. But she simply said again:

"Really!"

And he found it most aggravating. She had said "really" in that surprised tone so often that he began to hate the word.

He swished the heads of the tall grass with the stick he was carrying—the beheading operation was a relief to his feelings.

She watched him from beneath her long lashes, and there was a curve round her lips all the time—she couldn't help a smile.

"I thought at one time, Tessie——"

"Yes?"

"Thought you—well, I was a fool for thinking so, wasn't I?"

"Really can't tell what you did think," she answered demurely. "I am sure I should be a conspicuous failure as a thought reader."

"Last night I went to bed the happiest man in America."

"So?"

"Yes. I am a poor devil of a wandering sort of sheep, and a woman's kind words have come on my ears so seldom——"

"Yes."

"That they influence me when they come."

"Women," she spoke with assumed carelessness, "have been kind to you, then?"

"You were kind to me last night, Tessie."

"Really! What did I say?"

"Not so much what you said, but the way you said it. Tessie, don't drive me mad. You know—you do—now, don't you—that I love you?"

Of course she knew it, but she was not going to admit it. She looked quite surprised, as if such an idea had never occurred to her.

She was a true woman—an actress to the tips of her fingers, when the subject of the play was love. He went on:

"I led an idle sort of life, Tessie, in the old country, and I came out here to turn over a new leaf. I have turned it over, and fastened down the old one.

"I am not worth a red cent—whatever that is—now, but I have faith in myself, and I believe that presently, if hard work and persistence raise a man on the ladder, I'll be able to climb up. I never expected for a moment that you would climb with me; I would not be such a selfish brute as to ask you to. But there was something I had intended to ask you—only—only——"

"What was it?"

"Your kindness made me think of it. I told you that I went to bed last night the happiest man in all America. But I didn't tell you I slept.

"I did not. I lay thinking—thinking all the time of you. I thought I would begin that climb with such a heart, with such an eagerness, with such a will, because I would have you for an incentive."

"Well?"

"I thought that last night, because you behaved to me like a—like an angel. And I determined to ask you to-day to—to—that's why I came out to the sheds to meet you."

"What were you—what were you going to ask me?"

"To wait for me, Tessie. To wait a year or two till I was up the tree a bit with a nest I could invite you to share with me. I love you, Tessie, love you with all my heart and soul.

"I suppose I ought to have told you all this differently; then you would have liked me all the better for it. But I am not experienced in love affairs, Tessie. You are the first woman I have ever really loved—the first I have ever told so."

She did not, somehow, seem dissatisfied with his manner of telling it, and the concluding sentence was as wise a one as he could have framed.

They were walking very slowly now, and if the girl did not say much, she thought the more. Nice, pleasant, happy thoughts, and they made her sweet to the man who had inspired them.

"The plain question I wanted a plain answer to, Tessie, was: Was I a fool last night? Was I ass enough to misunderstand you? Did my vanity make me think you cared for me? Tessie, Tessie, do you love me?"

"You said a plain question, Gerald."

She had her eyes fixed on the ground as she spoke. "But I have counted four questions all in that one breath."

"Tessie, darling, answer me."

"What, all four?"

She had raised her mischievous eyes to his, and fixed them on him in such a way that his heart leaped.

"Tessie!"

"Supposing I answer one?"

"Tessie?"

"The—last—one."

"Yes, yes, yes."

"That is my answer."

"What?"

"Yes."

He caught her in his arms then, and—well, Blossom standing in the middle of the meadow chewing her cud paused in that operation in sheer astonishment.